North Korea wages war on long hair

The government of North Korea has launched a series of television public service announcements called "Let Us Trim Our Hair In Accordance With Socialist Lifestyle!"

Snip from a BBC News story on the campaign: "It stressed the 'negative effects' of long hair on 'human intelligence development,' noting that long hair 'consumes a great deal of nutrition' and could thus rob the brain of energy."

This is really funny, for a number of reasons -- first, Pyongyang's logic flies in the face of the Luxuriant Flowing Hair Club for Scientists, an elite alliance of demonstrably smart dudes who all have very long hair.

Secondly, I met several young men in Richmond, Virginia this past weekend who identify themselves as Socialists. Each were in their 20's, none of them shave, and one -- Silver -- even ran for mayor on the seemingly contradictory "pro-labor, pro-marijuana" platform ("I came in fifth -- out of five candidates," he told me, "I'm demanding a recount... they said I only got two votes, and I know for a fact I got at least ten.") Long hair seemed to be totally de rigeur in this faction of the Party. Clearly, there's a disturbance in the force.

Link to BBC story on North Korean TV PSAs, via William Gibson's blog, which also features a snapshot of a NSFW snowman in Vancouver today.

Why doesn't anybody point out that Kim Jong-Il has the full-onbouffantaction going? What, he doesn't want competition? Or are the REAL North Korean power-that-be tweaking their leader indirectly by outlawing his haircut? Where are the retired Kremlinologists when you need them?

In 1841, Charles Mackay published a wonderful book on "The Madness Of Crowds"; strange behaviour by societies, or groups, covering everything from the South Sea Bubble and the Tulip craze to fly-by-night London slang. One of the things he touched on was the various approaches to hair - the way long, flowing locks have shot from being a sign of Real Masculinity to Shocking Effeminacy and back over time. Here is an extract of that chapter.

Some of it is amusing - the Papal edict that wearers of long hair were to be excommunicated, or the Russian beard-taxes - and some simply strange, like his theory that the Haircut Issue caused the Hundred Years War. But it certainly seemed apt in respect of this; can we ever out-surreal history?